Books of the Week Saturday, 25th June, 2022

Turmoil in Punjab : An Insider's Account: Before and After Blue Star
by - Ramesh Inder Singh 

About the Book
Punjab went through a politically turbulent period between 1978 and 1994, triggered by the rift between Sikhs and Nirankaris, and fuelled by the operations Blue Star, Woodrose and Black Thunder I and II. Narrated as an eyewitness account by Ramesh Inder Singh, then the district magistrate of Amritsar, and later the chief secretary of Punjab, this book affords an insider's view of the events that ignited the strife and created the socio-political fault lines that divided Punjab in those years. It also describes the terrorist violence in Punjab, the state response to the military operations, the death of thousands of innocent citizens, the shocking assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the subsequent lynching of close to 3,000 Sikhs in the national capital of Delhi, which set in motion a devastating ethno-national movement in Punjab.
Based on extensive research and first-hand accounts of those who lived through those volcanic years, Turmoil in Punjab: Before and After Blue Star is an eye-opening narrative of the genesis of the Punjab conflict, the rise of radicalism and the Khalistanis, and the elimination of militancy from the state. 

About the Author
Ramesh Inder Singh is a distinguished civil servant of the Punjab cadre and a recipient of the Padma Shri (1986) for his contributions to public administration. 
He was the district magistrate of Amritsar from 1984 to 1987, and dealt with the tumultuous situation in Punjab in those years. The various army operations against militancy, including Operation Blue Star, Operation Woodrose and Operation Black Thunder-1, were conducted during this period. 
In his forty-year career, he has held many crucial appointments. He was principal secretary to the chief minister of Punjab for five years, the chief secretary of Punjab for more than two years and from that position he took premature retirement from the IAS in 2009 to serve for five years as the chief information commissioner of Punjab. He has also worked with the World Bank as a consultant. Currently, he leads a retired life.
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Books of the Week - Saturday, 18th June, 2022

After Steve
How Apple became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul
by - Tripp Mickle

About the Book
From the Wall Street Journal’s Tripp Mickle, the dramatic, untold story inside Apple after the passing of Steve Jobs by following his top lieutenants―Jony Ive, the Chief Design Officer, and Tim Cook, the COO-turned-CEO―and how the fading of the former and the rise of the latter led to Apple losing its soul.

Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his “spiritual partner at Apple.” The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative force who most embodies Jobs’s spirit, the man who designed the products adopted by hundreds of millions the world over: the iPod, iPad, MacBook Air, the iMac G3, and the iPhone. In the wake of his close collaborator’s death, the chief designer wrestled with grief and initially threw himself into his work designing the new Apple headquarters and the Watch before losing his motivation in a company increasingly devoted more to margins than to inspiration.

In many ways, Cook was Ive’s opposite. The product of a small Alabama town, he had risen through the ranks from the supply side of the company. His gift was not the creation of new products. Instead, he had invented countless ways to maximize a margin, squeezing some suppliers, persuading others to build factories the size of cities to churn out more units. He considered inventory evil. He knew how to make subordinates sweat with withering questions.

Jobs selected Cook as his successor, and Cook oversaw a period of tremendous revenue growth that has lifted Apple’s valuation to $3 trillion. He built a commanding business in China and rapidly distinguished himself as a master politician who could forge global alliances and send the world’s stock market into freefall with a single sentence.

Author Tripp Mickle spoke with more than 200 current and former Apple executives, as well as figures key to this period of Apple’s history, including Trump administration officials and fashion luminaries such as Anna Wintour while writing After Steve. His research shows the company’s success came at a cost. Apple lost its innovative spirit and has not designed a new category of device in years. Ive’s departure in 2019 marked a culmination in Apple’s shift from a company of innovation to one of operational excellence, and the price is a company that has lost its soul.

About the Author
Tripp Mickle is a technology and business reporter for the Wall Street Journal. In addition to  writing about Apple for five years, he has written extensively about Google and other Silicon  Valley giants. He has appeared on CNBC and NPR and previously worked as a sportswriter. He  lives with his wife and German shorthaired pointer in San Francisco, California. 
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Books of the Week - Saturday, 11Th June, 2022

1946 Royal Indian Navy Mutiny:
Last War of Independence
by Pramod Kapoor

About the Book
In 1946, 20,000 non-commissioned sailors of the Royal Indian Navy mutinied. They were inspired by the heroism of the Azad Hind Fauj. But their anger was sparked by terrible service conditions, racism, and broken recruitment promises. In less than 48 hours, 20,000 men took over 78 ships and 21 shore establishments and replaced British flags with the entwined flags of the Congress, the Muslim League, and the communists. The British panicked and announced a Cabinet Mission to discuss modalities of transfer of power. By this time, Indian troops had refused to fire on the ratings, and the mutiny sparked revolts in other branches of the armed forces.

The young ratings presented a charter of demands, even as they fought pitched battles against British troops. People thronged the streets in support, and hartals were followed by street fights between civilians and British soldiers resulting in over 400 deaths and 1,500 injured. To quell the rebellion, the British commanded their powerful warship HMS Glasgow to sail rapidly from Trincomalee and ordered low sorties by the Royal Air Force fighter planes. In retaliation, the ratings trained the guns mounted on the captured ships towards the shore, threatening to blow Gateway of India, Yacht Club, and the dockyards.

As violence escalated, telegrams flew between the Viceroy’s office and the British Cabinet. The British realized they could no longer hold India by force. While the communists continued to support the rebellious ratings, the Congress and the Muslim League persuaded them to surrender, promising they would not be victimized. Shamefully, years later, the governments of India and Pakistan refused to honour those promises after Independence. The mutiny caused public disagreements between Gandhiji and Aruna Asaf Ali, and between Sardar Patel and Nehru. Historians say it accelerated the transfer of power. But this seminal event, which inspired songs, art and theatre has been edited out of the popular narratives of the Freedom Movement.

About the Author
Pramod Kapoor, the founder and publisher of Roli Books (established in 1978), has over the course of his illustrious career, conceived and produced award-winning books that have proven to be game-changers in the world of publishing. Be it the hit ‘Then and Now’ series and the seminal Made for Maharajas, or even the internationally acclaimed Gandhi: An Illustrated Biography, which is published in eleven editions in most major languages worldwide.

In 2016, he was conferred with the prestigious Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour), the highest civil and military award in France, for his contribution to producing books that have changed the landscape of Indian publishing. He is also a recipient of the prestigious Mahatma Award 2021 (an Aditya Birla Group initiative) for Lifetime Achievement for his contribution to publishing and literature in India.

This book is a result of his years of research and deep interest in the period and personalities who have left a mark in the subcontinent’s history.
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Books of the Week - Saturday, 04 June, 2022

Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921
by - Antony Beevor 

About the Book
Between 1917 and 1921 a devastating struggle took place in Russia following the collapse of the Tsarist empire. Many regard this savage civil war as the most influential event of the modern era. An incompatible White alliance of moderate socialists and reactionary monarchists stood little chance against Trotsky's Red Army and Lenin's single-minded Communist dictatorship. Terror begat terror, which in turn led to even greater cruelty with man's inhumanity to man, woman and child. The struggle became a world war by proxy as Churchill deployed weaponry and troops from the British empire, while armed forces from the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Poland and Czechoslovakia played rival parts.
Using the most up to date scholarship and archival research, Antony Beevor, author of the acclaimed international bestseller Stalingrad, assembles the complete picture in a gripping narrative that conveys the conflict through the eyes of everyone from the worker on the streets of Petrograd to the cavalry officer on the battlefield and the woman doctor in an improvised hospital.

About the Author
Antony Beevor is the author of CRETE: The Battle and the Resistance (Runciman Prize), STALINGRAD (Samuel Johnson Prize, Wolfson Prize for History and Hawthornden Prize), BERLIN: The Downfall, THE BATTLE FOR SPAIN (Premio La Vanguardia), D-DAY: The Battle for Normandy (Prix Henry Malherbe and the RUSI Westminster Medal), THE SECOND WORLD WAR, ARDENNES 1944 (Prix Médicis shortlist) and ARNHEM: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944. Beevor's books have appeared in thirty-three languages and have sold more than eight million copies. A former chairman of the Society of Authors, he has received a number of honorary doctorates. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Kent and an Honorary Fellow of King's College, London. He was knighted in 2017.
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